Fazil Iskander: Sandro of Chegem

"Sandro of Chegem" is the central work in the oeuvre of Fazil Iskander, a living classic of Russian literature who gifted it the warm light of Abkhazia, its sparkling temperament, and its vivid, passionate poetry.
An epic novel in short stories, it recounts the adventurous life of Sandro, a rogue and joker from an Abkhazian village. These stories balance on the edge of magical realism while remaining entirely realistic: it is just that this reality is full of incredible events, which sometimes turn out to be truly tragic, and the fragmented nature of the narrative gives it a touch of the fairy-tale. The author's intoxicating language, incredible humor interspersed with bitter irony, and colorful descriptions of Abkhazian life make "Sandro of Chegem" the pinnacle of Iskander's work—it was for this novel that he was proposed for the Nobel Prize in Literature. The writer worked on the novel for over thirty years, repeatedly rewriting and expanding individual stories, and together with the tales of Sandro's adventures, the complex history of 20th-century Abkhazia unfolds before us.

Author: Fazil Iskander 

Pages: 1184 (offset). Hardcover

Dimensions: 217x149x48 mm

Series: Russian Literature. Big Books